One Second After

CHAPTER NINE

He awoke to the dogs barking and instantly knew… someone was in the house.

They had drilled the plan after the murder of the Connors last week, their home at the top of the road, all four of them, parents, two kids, the house then ransacked from one end to the other for whatever scraps of food they might have.

He didn’t hesitate, shotgun up as he stepped out of the office crouching low.

The two dogs were barking madly, snarling, and then he heard the crack of a gun and a high-pitched, yelping scream.

He stepped into the living room. The back door into the kitchen was wide open. Two men, at least it looked like two men.

So this was the moment and he did it without hesitation.

The first blast nearly decapitated the man by the door. The second turned; one shot fired wild and the second blast caught that one in the guts, flinging him back against the kitchen counter.

The girls had been drilled; if there was an intruder they were supposed to get on the floor behind the bed. The water bed where they now slept together was an excellent barrier….

After several seconds Elizabeth started screaming “Daddy!”

“Stay put!”

Crouched down low, he came around the turn into the kitchen. The one man was definitely dead; even in the dark moonlight John could see that, the other whimpering, kicking spasmodically. By his side was Zach, crying pitifully, Ginger, with hackles raised, snarling at the wounded man.

There could be someone outside, John realized, but first he crawled over to the wounded man, grabbed his pistol, which was on the floor, a .22 revolver from the feel of it, and stuck it into his belt. The other man didn’t have a gun, just a machete, and John took that with his free hand.

He headed back to the wide-open door, was about to step out, then thought twice, doubling back through the house, coming in low to first Jennifer’s room and then Elizabeth’s to make sure there wasn’t a third intruder.

Past his old bedroom he looked in for a second.

“I’m all right. Now don’t move!” he hissed. “Elizabeth, you have your gun.”

“Yes, Daddy,” and her voice was trembling.

“If I come back to this room, I’ll call out first. If anyone else comes through, you shoot and don’t hesitate.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Back out through his office and then the front door, which he slipped open, circling back around the house.

No one else. He slipped through the rear door into the kitchen and touched the basement door; it was still locked. Then once more, down low, sweeping Jennifer’s and Elizabeth’s rooms yet again, nervously popping the closet doors open, both rooms still empty.

He went back into the kitchen.

“Jen, light a candle and get out here.”

A minute later the flickering light illuminated the kitchen. Jen recoiled at the sight of the first man, face gone. The second was crying louder now, curled up. And then there was Zach.

John went over to his old buddy, his friend of so many years, who had saved their lives with his warning. He was shot in the top of the back, just behind the shoulder blades.

“Oh, God, Zach,” John sighed. And like so many dogs, so desperately hurt, Zach licked John’s hand as if by doing so he’d feel better.

John looked over at Jen, wide-eyed.

“You got to help me.” It was the wounded man. “Please help me.” John actually felt stunned with how quickly he reacted. The Glock he kept strapped to his side even when he slept was out, round already chambered.

“John?” It was Jen.

He squeezed the trigger, the discharge of the 9mm round an explosion that set Elizabeth and Jennifer to screaming again.

“It’s all right!” John shouted. “It’s all right, girls, but stay put.” John looked at Jen, who stood stock-still, horrified. “I’d of shot him in town if he lived that long.”

John had executed five in the last week. Two of them locals, who had stolen a pig, killed it, and were gorging themselves up in a mountain hollow when finally tracked down, the two pathetic fools never fully realizing that hungry men could now smell meat cooking from half a mile away. The other three caught raiding a house, just like the two on the floor now.

“Jen, you’ll have to help me drag them outside. I don’t want the girls to see this mess.”

Zach’s whimpers made John turn around. Ginger was lying by Zach’s side, licking her old friend.

John filled up. The execution-style killing had bothered him not in the least. Washington Parker was right. After the first one, it starts to get easier, and in this case, the men invading his home, threatening his girls, it didn’t bother John in the slightest.

It was Zach, though. Zach and Ginger were down to skin and bones, ribs showing through their once sleek coats. Regardless of the ban on letting dogs run wild, John had let them out to forage since their old stomping grounds had been up in the woods that became Pisgah National Forest not a hundred yards away. Though he worried that others out hunting would bag them, so far they had been lucky.

He knelt down by Zach’s side. Zach lifted his head and again licked John.

“Thank you, old friend,” John sighed. “Thank you for everything.”

“Do you want me to do it?” Jen whispered.

Startled, he looked up at her.

“No, he was our dog, Mary’s and mine.”

He pulled out the .22 taken from the dead man, cocked it, and put it behind Zach’s ear. Ginger stood up, sensing something, whimpering loudly now… and John couldn’t do it, dissolving into tears.

“I’ll take care of him,” Jen whispered. “You go outside, take Ginger with you. You don’t want her to see it either. Now go on.”

Jen left the room and was back seconds later with the last pack of cigarettes and the bottle of scotch that held a final precious ounce.

“Girls, we’re safe, but you are to stay in your room, on the floor!” Jen shouted.

John looked at Zach and felt at that moment like a coward, completely unmanned. He knelt down and kissed Zach on the forehead. He was bloody, panting hard. He stood back up and then went outside, dragging Ginger by the collar, and let her loose. He lit the cigarette and uncorked the bottle.

“There, there, Zach,” he could hear Jen in the kitchen. “Tell Tyler I love him. You remember our dog Lady. Its time to play with her now….”

The muffled crack of the pistol had John leaning over the deck railing, crying, Ginger whimpering and nuzzling against his legs.

There was such a surreal sense of disconnect. I just killed two men, executing one without a second’s hesitation. But this? Sobbing over a dog?

Jen came out the door a moment later bearing Zach, wrapped in a blanket.

“He’s so light,” she said softly. “He’s better off now.”

“I’ll bury him once it gets light,” John said.

“No, John.”

“What?”

And then he realized. No, not Zach, no, he couldn’t. “I’d vomit. The girls, too. We can’t.”

“Take him down to the Robinsons. It won’t be the same for them. Besides, poor Pattie is starving to death.”

“They’re on rations. Any food hoarding by getting something additional they lose their cards. According to the law we can eat him, but they can’t. I’m supposed to turn him in to the communal food supply.”

“Damn it, John. You are so cold-blooded logical in some ways and an idiot in other ways. Take him down to the Robinsons now. They can trade us something for him later.”

John finally nodded.

She handed Zach’s body to him.

“I’ll get Lee to help with the bodies. You keep the girls out of the living room and kitchen.”

“You’ll tell them?” John asked.

She nodded.

John slowly walked over to the car.

“Don’t move another goddamn inch.” a voice hissed in the darkness.

He froze, cursing himself as an idiot. There had been a third man, maybe a fourth or fifth. John prepared to drop Zach, shout a warning before they got him, give Jen and Elizabeth time to be ready.

“John, that you?”

And now he recognized the voice; it was Lee Robinson.

“Jesus, Lee, yeah, it’s me.”

“I heard shots, came up to help.”

“Thanks, Lee.”

He stepped out of the shadows and drew closer. “John, what are you carrying? Oh Jesus, not one of the dogs.”

“Zach. If he and Ginger hadn’t of warned us, they’d of had us, two of them. I killed both. Zach got shot by one of the bastards.”

“I just heard a shot a minute ago.”

“I couldn’t do it,” John admitted, and he found himself clutching Zach tighter. “What a piece of shit. Jen had to do it.”

“It’s ok, John; it’s ok,” and Lee’s arm was around John’s shoulder.

Southerners, he thought. Southerners and their dogs, they understand. He could feel Lee shaking a bit; he had been partial to Zach as well, their old dog Max a buddy. Max had disappeared a week ago, most likely poached while wandering in the woods, and Lee was absolutely distraught over him.

John gained control and the two stood there looking at Zach and each knew what the other was thinking.

“Take him, Lee,” was all John could say.

“John, not in a million years did I ever think we’d come to this.” John handed the body over.

“I’ll take him down to Mona. She’ll be respectful as she…” He started to choke up as well and couldn’t speak for a moment. “Thank you. I was getting frantic over Pattie. The damn rations just aren’t enough. John, Zach saved her life, too.”

John started his drive down to town several hours later. The bodies of the two robbers stretched out on the porch as he pulled away from the house. Bartlett’s meat wagon, as they now sardonically called it, the old VW Bus, could be sent up later to get them.

John felt so cold about their deaths that for a moment he dwelled on the thought that two extra rations would now be spent, the reward for the digging of a grave, in the golf course cemetery. There were fifteen hundred graves there now, another five hundred filling the Swannanoa Christian School’s soccer field.

Kellor had been right. The dying time was now upon them. Deaths from starvation were soaring. Yesterday there had been close to a hundred. Mostly the elderly still and then parents.

As a historian John knew that was the pattern, though a casual observer, an academic sitting in an armchair calculating such things, would have figured the children next. But what parent would eat while their child starved? The ration lines, now five of them scattered around the two communities, had nearly ninety percent of the surviving population showing up, for one distribution a day of soup and either a biscuit or a piece of bread.

That was another “state” secret. The bakery, closely guarded at a local pizza shop where wood heat had been rigged in, was now mixing in sawdust to give the bread bulk, to fill stomachs. It was the same as Leningrad, and actually that had been the inspiration for John to suggest it.

So the parents, many of them working to get an extra ration, were bringing the food home to their children, then dying off, and once both parents were gone it was hoped that neighbors or kin would take the orphans in.

Charlie and Tom had been forced to issue strict orders that personnel receiving extra rations were to eat them on site when the rations were issued, but even so, they’d stash a biscuit in a pocket, some even rigged up plastic liners in their pockets to pour the soup into when they thought no one was watching, then slowly walk home where two, three, four hungry kids might be waiting.

And yet ironically, at the same time, at least according to Voice of America, there were signs that some recovery was going on, down along the coast.

The federal government was reconvened, functioning aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln, and martial law was still in effect. There were reports that the corn and wheat harvest of the Midwest would be brought in and train lines reopened to move the bulk goods. Headquarters for the southeast emergency government had been established in Charleston and daily reports now issued about the progress of rebuilding, even a claim that a nuclear power plant in Georgia had been brought back online, but it seemed like any progress being made was moving along the coast or slowly edging towards Atlanta. He wondered if someone up the command chain had decided to “triage off” upper South Carolina and western North Carolina.

There had been overflights, though. Fighters several times, a C-17 transport, and Asheville finally admitted that replacement parts for generators for the hospital had been airlifted in.

Asheville was playing its cards close. The phone line that Black Mountain had started had been run into the county office in Asheville, but the communications were rather one-sided, as if the director there resented the showdown over refugees versus water supply.

The thought that some kind of medical supplies had been lifted into Asheville had made John wild, Washington having to nearly physically restrain him from driving straight there and demanding some fresh insulin. He had personally telephoned Burns, who still was running Asheville, and begged for any information on insulin and Burns flatly announced none had come in and even if it had, he would not release any outside of the town no matter what.

Insulin, John was obsessed with it. Two days ago Jennifer’s blood sugar was up. She had taken an injection, and it was still up.

He had finally gone for Makala and she carefully examined Jennifer, then took him aside.

“The three remaining bottles. They might have spoiled,” was all Makala would say.

It had finally taken three times the normal dose to bring Jennifer’s level back down.

Her time had been cut by two-thirds.

And help, if it was indeed help, was still as far away as the far side of the moon.

Of the other diabetics in the town, over half were dead, the others dropping off fast.

He turned off the motor of his car, sat back, and lit another cigarette, the sixth of the day… oh, the hell with it and the counting out.

He sat there, smoked, looking at the interstate, cars still stalled where they had died over two months ago.

Somehow we’ve all been playing a game of reality avoidance with ourselves, even on Day One, he realized.

Anyone with even the remotest understanding of EMP and the threat to the nation should have been going insane before it hit. During World War II the entire nation had been mobilized, all the talk of loose lips sinking ships, the scrap drives, the guards on railroad bridges in Iowa. Much of it was absurd when the threat was finally understood, long after the war was over. There were no legions of spies and saboteurs in America, and the few who were in place or attempted to infiltrate were caught within days by the FBI. There was a threat, and though remote, it was at least acted on back then. But this time? The threat was a hundred times worse and they did nothing, absolutely nothing. Angrily he stubbed out the cigarette and lit another.

If everyone had been educated to it, the same way Civil Defense had once been in the curriculum of every school back in the 1940s and 1950s, if people knew the simple things to do on Day One, Charlie already trained to react to an EMP, mobilize his forces and react quickly… if they had but a few simple provisions stocked away, the same way anyone who lives in hurricane or tornado country does, would they be in this mess?

The crime, the real crime was those who truly knew the level of threat doing nothing to prepare or prevent it. Bitterly he wondered if they were suffering as the rest of the nation now suffered or were they safely hidden away, the special bunkers for Congress, the administration, where food, water, and medicine for years were waiting for them… and their families? The thought of it filled him with rage. He knew what he would do if he could but go there now; show them Jennifer and then do what he wished he could do to them.

And he could see his own avoidance of it all since that first day even as he did scramble to at least get insulin. Food, bulk food, just a fifty-pound bag of rice or flour, shoes, batteries, an additional test kit for Jennifer, damn it, even birth control for Elizabeth, dog food, a water filter so they didn’t have to boil what they now pulled out of the swamp green pool… I should have had those on hand.

It was over two months later and people in his small North Carolina town were dying of starvation. I pretty well understood it on Day One, and yet I avoided the worst of it ever since, he thought. Doc Kellor had alluded to it in their meeting of nearly a month ago, when the decision was made to reduce rations for most of the populace, but we did not fully face the horrible realities of it.

America, the breadbasket of the world, which could feed a billion people without even breaking a sweat, was dying now of starvation. The two frequencies of Voice of America were talking daily about the first harvests coming in from the southern Midwest, of cattle being driven, and it all sounded to him like the old Chinese and Soviet broadcasts of the Cold War when they boasted daily about their great strides even while people lived in squalor and indeed did die of starvation.

The food was there, but it would never get here, not to this place, not now. That meant that over twenty percent of the town was dead and upwards of half would die in another thirty days, while food by the millions of tons rotted because they still had no means of moving it in bulk to where it was needed most.

The medicines. Yes, they were out there, someplace. Some stockpiles overseas perhaps, but the factories that made them were in cities, and the cities had no power, or perhaps a few places here and there, and the people who worked in the factories were hunkered down or scattered refugees, perhaps some of the very people now lying dead below the barrier. And even if the factory did suddenly turn on, the insulin was processed from genetically altered bacteria in labs. But the labs, maybe in New York or Arizona, were a thousand miles away. The bottles it was then loaded into? Perhaps made in Mexico and trucked to the lab a thousand miles away… and then loaded back aboard climate-controlled trucks, and taken to airports and priority-shipped in containers specially designed, those containers perhaps made in Mississippi. And so it went.

IV bags. Nearly all the IV bags in America were made in just a few places. Million a day. And they were boxed in sterile environments and then shipped to other factories that filled them with blood drawn perhaps a thousand miles away, or various solutions mixed in Oregon and shipped to Texas there to meet the bags to be filled.

And so much, so much from overseas that were in containerships offloaded by diesel-electric-powered cranes, then loaded into trucks. Perhaps the plastic to make the IV bag first emerging from the ground as oil in Kuwait, and from there to Texas to be cracked and the appropriate chemicals siphoned off and shipped to Louisiana to be turned into plastics, some of them for plastic bags to come to Asheville.

Such a vast, intricate, beautiful, profoundly complex web, the most complex in history, and all along a few enemies, enemies whom Americans had for years ignored, and then in one day had come to hate, and that hate had slowly changed, as it does with Americans, to remoteness, disdain, and a smug sense of ultimate victory, perhaps even victory by the simple fact that they made a wish that the enemies were no longer there. For ultimately, what did 9/11 do in the coldest sense? It killed three thousand. Did the economy collapse the next day? Did John’s Jennifer miss an insulin shot? Did the workers in a factory that made insulin scatter in panic on 9/11? No. And in spite of outrage, people’s tears of empathy, unless it was a friend or one of their own blood lost that day, their world really did not change other than the annoyance of getting through an airport.

The web of our society, John thought, was like the beautiful spiderwebs he’d find as a boy in the back lot after dawn on summer days, dew making them visible. Vast, beautiful intricate things. And at the single touch of a match the web just collapsed and all that was left for the spider to do, if it survived that day, was to rebuild the web entirely from scratch. And our enemies knew that and planned for it… and succeeded.

He tossed the second butt out the window, lit another, and drove into town to report the attack on his house and get Jim to bring up the meat wagon.

The soup line at the elementary school was already forming up, even though distribution of the day’s rations wasn’t until noon. The carcass of a hog was trussed up to a tree, actually barely a suckling, already stripped down to the bones, which would be tossed into the pot as well.

The people on line were skeletal, their weight really falling away now. Many could barely shuffle along. Kids were beginning to have bloated stomachs. Out along the curb half a dozen bodies lay, dragged out for the meat wagon, no longer even given the dignity of a sheet to cover them. A man, three kids, most likely their parents dead and no one to truly care for them, and a woman, obviously a suicide, with her wrists slashed open.

It made John think of the woman on the road…. Carol, that was her name. Most likely dead by suicide long ago.

The refugee center was starting to empty out, people beginning to move into the homes of locals who had died.

In the short drive he could sense the collapse setting in. The bodies in front of the elementary school, the fact of just how dusty and litter-strewn the streets were. Without the usual maintenance, storm drains had plugged up with debris; several trees had dropped and were then cut back just enough to let a single vehicle through. One of the beautiful towering pines in front of the elementary school had collapsed across the road, smashing in the Front Porch diner across the street. Enough of the tree had been cut away to clear the road for traffic, the rest just left in place.

Nothing had been done to repair the diner’s crushed roof, the inside now left open to the elements, the building itself broken into repeatedly by scavengers who were now willing to scrape the grease out of the traps as food.

That broke his heart every time he drove past it. The diner had been his usual stop on many a morning long ago. Mary would have freaked on his breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hash browns, but he so loved the place, the owner a man he truly respected, hardworking, starting from a hole in the wall a block away to create a diner that was “the” place in Black Mountain for breakfast. Truckers, construction workers, shop owners, and at least one professor type. How many mornings had John spent there, after dropping the kids off at school, for a great meal, a cigarette, the usual banter, playing one of the games the owner carved out of wood, trick puzzles, and then going on to his late morning lecture?

“What a world we once had,” he sighed.

The parking lot of the bank at the next corner was becoming weed choked, though that was being held back a bit by children from the refugee center plucking out any dandelions they saw and eating them. The bank had been one of the last of an old but dead breed, locally owned, the owner’s Land Rover still parked out front, covered in dust and dried mud.

John turned past Hamid’s store. A few cars out front, a VW Bug and a rust bucket of a ’65 Chevy, a couple of mopeds. Hamid had traded some smokes for an old generator, traded some cigarettes to someone else to get it fixed, and now he actually had some juice. It had been quite the thing when he fired it up, and the lights flickered on dimly. He had diverted the juice into two things: a fridge and one of the pumps for his gas tanks. John had instantly thought of asking Hamid to take the vials of insulin he still had, but Makala had vetoed it. The generator-driven power was variable, shutting down, fired back up again. Better to keep it at a steady fifty-five than at forty degrees that might suddenly climb to sixty or seventy before plunging back down below freezing.

But still his old friend had come through for him, a debt he could never repay, and he felt like a beggar every time he wandered in.

“For my favorite little girl,” Hamid would say as he pressed a small package into John’s hands, a piece of newspaper with a pound or two of ice inside. Ice, a precious pound or two of ice to try to keep the temperature of the remaining vials down a few degrees.

“I still owe you twenty bucks,” John would always say, and Hamid would just smile, for he had little girls, too, and he knew, and he was proud to be an American helping a friend.

Makala. Funny, John hadn’t thought of her these last few days. My own starvation, he thought. The unessentials of the body shut down first and after four years of celibacy after the death of Mary he had grown used to it. He knew Makala was interested in him; in a vastly different world they would definitely have been dating, but not now. Besides, he did not want to upset the delicate balance of his family. Jen had been Mary’s mother; how would she react? The girls? They might like Makala as a friend, but as something more? For Jennifer, her mom was already becoming remote, but for Elizabeth, the death had hit at twelve, a most vulnerable of times, and her room still had half a dozen pictures of the two of them together and one that still touched John’s heart, a beautifully framed portrait from Mary’s high school graduation, the color fading but Mary very much the girl he had met in college.

He pulled up to the town hall complex. The rumble of a generator outside varied up and down in pitch as more power or less was being used.

One of the fire trucks was being washed down. The mechanics had finally bypassed all the electronics, done some retrofitting, and the engine had finally kicked back to life ten days ago.

He walked in. Charlie was in his office, cot in the corner unmade, looking up as John came in.

Charlie had lost at least thirty pounds or more, face pinched. He had a cup of what looked to be some herbal tea.

“Two dead up at my house, shot them this morning,” John said matter-of-factly.

“That’s eight reported now just this morning,” Charlie replied, his voice hoarse.

John sat down, looked at his pack of cigarettes, fourteen left, and offered one to Charlie, who did not hesitate to take it.

“Damn it, Charlie. You got to get at least one extra meal in you.”

He shook his head.

“Might not matter soon anyhow.”

“Why’s that?”

“We think the Posse is coming this way.”

“What?”

“Don Barber flew his recon plane out a couple hours ago to take a look for us along Interstate 40 heading towards Hickory; he’s yet to get back. Four days ago we didn’t have a single refugee at the barrier, two days ago nearly a hundred, yesterday more than two hundred; it’s as if something is pressuring them from behind. Rumors running with them that Morgan-ton was just looted clean, a damn medieval pillage. Also, we had a shooting last night on the interstate.”

“So, that’s becoming almost a daily routine,” John said coolly.

“This one was different. One of the few heading east. Big guy, looked fairly well fed.”

“So what did he do?”

“Washington spotted him. He just had a gut feeling because he had seen this same guy, the day before, heading west; he stood out because he looked so well fed. Washington tagged along with the escort taking this guy and some other refugees east and played dumb. The big guy was peppering him with questions. How many folks lived here, how much food left, any organized defense.”

“A spy?”

“Exactly.”

“So Washington drew down on him just before the gap, and almost got killed for it. The guy had what Washington called an old-fashioned pimp gun up the sleeve of his jacket. Small .22. He actually got off the first shot and then Washington blew him away.”

“Washington ok?”

“Nicked on the side. Kellor said another inch in and, given the way things are now, he’d of been in deep trouble.”

“Where is Washington now?”

“Up at the college.”

“I think we should go up.”

Charlie nodded and the two got into John’s Edsel for the short drive.

The drive up to the campus reminded him yet again of the lost world of but several months back, his daily commute of not much more than four miles, and he thought again of bacon and eggs. Damn, that would be good now.

He almost said it to Charlie. Food had indeed become the obsessive topic on people’s minds, but now there was a ban on it being spoken of, a major breech of etiquette. It just made everyone crazy to talk about what they would eat when things “got better.”

As they passed the turnoff to the North Fork road, there were two more bodies covered with sheets out in front of a home.

“Ah, shit, not the Elliotts,” Charlie sighed.

Three children were out on the lawn, all of them skinny as rails, except that their stomachs were bloating, a neighbor clinging to them. That had started to appear over the last couple of weeks, kids with stomachs bloating out, even as they starved. Kellor told John it was edema, fluid buildup as their bodies inside began to shut down. It was the type of images he would always turn off when an infomercial ran for some save-the-kids type charity. Always it was kids in Africa or some disaster-stricken area in Asia with the bloated stomachs. He wondered if now, at this very moment, in a place in the world where electricity still flowed, such images were on their screens: “Give now to save the starving children in America.”

God, it was a sobering thought. Would our friends overseas, those we had helped so many times, without a thought of any return, now be coming to us? Were ships, loaded with food, racing towards us… or was there silence or, worse, laughter and contempt?

“He was getting an extra ration as a grave digger, in fact two rations because he was digging two a day,” Charlie said, interrupting John’s thoughts.

“And taking them home to the kids and his wife,” John said quietly.

They didn’t even slow down but just drove on.

They passed three boys, early teens, two of them toting .22s, the other a pellet gun, and the youngest with, yes, a bloated stomach as well. All three moving stealthily, peering up at the trees, the interlacing telephone and power lines.

There was most likely barely a squirrel or rabbit left in town now, and birds were now becoming part of the pot. John’s own hunts had started to come up empty unless he went deeper and deeper into the Pisgah forest. It knotted him up thinking about it. Zach had not even died with a meal in his stomach. He had come close to fighting with his Ginger for the rabbit he had bagged yesterday. Ginger was only allowed the bones after Jen had scraped off every bit of flesh for a rabbit stew.

“You know, we’re actually starting to run short of small-caliber ammunition,” Charlie said as they drove past the boys.

“Most folks who had a .22 in the closet rarely dragged it out and at best maybe had a box of fifty to a hundred rounds. Understand trading now is five bullets for a squirrel or rabbit.”

Fortunately, John still had several hundred himself, but he was short on shotgun shells. The heavier-caliber stuff, he had kept that for other reasons.

The gate ahead was roadblocked. In the past the students guarding it recognized his car and waved it through. Not today. They forced him to a stop, one of them standing back with a 12-gauge leveled, while the other came around the side and looked in.

“Good morning, sir; are you ok?”

“It’s Rebecca, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

She looked in his backseat, nodded, and two students started up the Volkswagen blocking the gate, let it roll forward for him to pass, then backed it into place and shut it down.

“Kids are getting more cautious.”

“Well, with all the dead last night in break-ins,” John said. “Lord knows how many others we’ll find out today were successful and the families inside the homes are now dead and rotting.

“I think it’s safe to assume that some of this Posse crowd have already infiltrated in, looked us over, and decided we are worth taking, at the very least to then move on to Asheville. Perhaps some are even holed up in some houses watching if we are getting prepared.”

They turned into the drive leading up to Gaither Hall. And the troops were out. The days of close-order drill long past, they were practicing covering fire and withdrawing in front of the library, Washington pacing back and forth, yelling instructions as John pulled up and turned off the car.

Washington turned and went through the ritual, still the annoying ritual for John, of saluting, which he returned.

Kids were all around. Hunkered down low, concealed behind trees, under vehicles, up in windows of buildings. Farther up the road John could see what must be the red force, Company B, deployed out beyond the girls’ dorm, a dozen vehicles running, some Volkswagens, again courtesy of Jimmie Bartlett, a few farm pickup trucks. One had a fake machine gun mounted on the back, technicals, John thought they were called in Somalia.

Washington held up his megaphone.

“Captain Malady. Now!”

Kevin Malady had been, of all things, an assistant librarian. With his strong, massive shoulders, thick black hair, and lantern jaw that made him look a bit like Schwarzenegger, the kids quickly giving him the nickname Conan the Librarian. He was ex-military, a sergeant with a mech unit in Iraq back in ’03. He had just resigned from the library staff and had planned to go to Princeton Theological in the fall. Now he was the CO of Company B.

He knew his stuff as they simulated the assault. The technical supposedly laying down fire support, a vehicle with a plow bolted to the front driving straight at the barrier.

Of course it came to a stop, Washington shouting that the barrier had been pierced.

Malady had more of his troops storm from around abandoned cars, rushing the barrier.

If this had been done a few months ago, the kids would have been laughing, seeing it as playacting, shouting and whooping. Not now. They were silent, following directions from their officers, several of them staff and faculty with military experience, the defensive force pulling back, to try to lure the attackers into what would be the killing zone if the gap was pierced on the interstate. A couple of hundred yards back from the gap, the road was flanked on one side by a high concrete wall, a sound barrier erected for several hundred yards to shield the conference center.

Washington had already established firing positions on the reverse side of the wall. The campus chapel, the new one built several years back, which now housed a famous fresco, The Return of the Prodigal, by the famous artist Ben Long, was serving as a simulator for the wall, students suddenly popping up from behind the ridge of the roof.

“That’s it!” Washington shouted. “Once up, it’s fire superiority. Pour it down fast and hard, fast and hard. Panic them!”

The simulation was starting to break down, kids standing around. There could be no realism to it, no blanks, no miles laser packs.

They had used paintballs at the start, but the supply of those was used up in two days.

Washington blew his whistle.

“Stand down. That’s it. Take an hour break. Dinner at noon.”

To John’s amazement, a fifer started to play and it sent a chill down his back. It was the D’Inzzenzo boy, not a student at the college, a local kid who had belonged to the reenactment unit and had taken to hanging around the college. Washington had taken a liking to him and he was now the official fifer for the militia, playing “Yankee Doodle” as the exercise ended.

“Good marching stuff,” Washington said as John looked back at the kid, wearing a Union kepi. “The students love it and it’s good for morale.”

Students came out from buildings, crawled out from under concealment, all of them armed. Their equipment had been gradually upgraded. Most were armed with semiautos, heavier caliber, a great percentage of Company B with deer rifles, a lot with scopes. Charlie had already said that if a crisis came, he’d release the automatic weapons kept in the police station to Washington. A few civilians had come forward as well, one showing up with what had been an illegal full auto M16 with over four hundred rounds, saying as long as he could tote it in a fight, he’d be part of the militia, a vet from the early days in Nam.

Both companies were now rounded out by vets who had seen service, as far back as Korea, adding nearly a hundred to their ranks. These vets might be old, but they had combat experience and were now slotted in as squad and platoon leaders.

Others, the survivalist types, including the legendary Franklins, were teaching the kids how to concoct homemade claymores, land mines, satchel charges, and homemade rocket launchers fashioned out of PVC pipe. The reenactors in the town regretted they could not get their hands on an original cannon, but were now mixing up black powder for these weapons and rigging up a field piece made out of steel pipe that would be packed with canister.

As for the students, within seconds they were reverting back, a couple of the guys laughing, shouting g(x>d-natured insults. More than a dozen couples instantly paired up, a few of them, without any attempt at stealth, with arms around each other, heading down towards the woods behind the science building.

“There’s a major problem brewing and figured we should check in with you,” Charlie said, his voice thin, raspy.

Washington nodded and the three took the shaded path, walking over the old stone arch bridge that led from Gregor Dorm to Gaither. John had always loved this place in particular. On many a day he’d sit on the bridge to watch the creek tumble beneath him. Students were always passing by and it was a great place to just hang out, chat with kids, sneak a smoke with another smoker… a breaking of the rules since they were outside a designated spot, but the dean had given up a long time ago trying to hassle John about it, and the president actually thought it was good, a faculty member twisting the administrative tail a little with the kids joining in.

They headed into President Hunt’s office. He rarely showed at the campus now, though his home was but a quarter mile away. In spite of the pleadings of John, Reverend Abel, and Washington, President Hunt had made a solemn statement that he and his wife would refuse extra rations. Every ounce of food had to go to “our soldiers and volunteers.” It was typical of him, incredibly noble, and as a result he was dying.

They walked in and sat down around the conference table in the office, and as they did so, a humming sputter echoed and they were back up, looking out the windows.

It was Don in his Aeronca L-3, D-day invasion stripes starkly visible on the wings and fuselage, clearing the crest by Lookout Mountain and then dipping down into the narrow valley of the Cove. He circled the campus once, tight turn, not fifty feet above the trees, saluted, and then leveled out to head south into town and the landing strip at the Ingram’s shopping plaza.

“So let me guess. The Posse is coming,” Washington said. John and Charlie nodded in agreement.

“It was inevitable; sooner or later they’d hear about us and figure we had something worth taking.

“He went out when, about two hours ago?” Washington asked.

“Make it two and a half,” John said. “That plane cruises at about sixty. It ain’t good news; they must be getting close.”

They went back to the table and sat down.

“One of the boys bagged a bear last night,” Washington said. “It’s down in the cookhouse now. Meat for everyone at noon, maybe a pound apiece.”

John instantly felt his mouth water. Twice now they had bagged bears, and though greasy as hell, bear was filling.

“I just wish we could get President Hunt to join us. I sent a couple of the girls up there to plead with him and they said he just smiled and refused. They were crying when they came back, said he looks terrible.”

“That’s Dan,” John said quietly. “And maybe he’s right. These kids have to be in good shape. We can’t have them staggering like weak kittens if this Posse shows up.”

“Are they ready?” Charlie asked.

Washington shook his head.

“Not very reassuring, damn it,” Charlie replied sharply.

“Look, Charlie. I love these kids. Have known them for years. Down deep they’re mostly small-town kids with good hearts, and remember, as a Christian college here, we were drawing kids with particular values and views as well. Or at least their parents saw it that way even if the kids didn’t.

“But if you want the harsh reality, I can pick out a couple of the young men for you. Kids who grew up in the projects in Charlotte or Greensboro or Atlanta. And they’ll tell you a different story about reality. Kids at twelve cappin’ each other and boasting about being gangbangers. Kids at sixteen already with time in jail, maybe fathers already, cold-eyed as dead snakes, and most of them dead at twenty-five.”

“The old sick joke,” John sighed. “You won’t find a drug dealer with a four-oh-one (k) plan.”

“Exactly,” Washington snapped. “These kids here, up until two months ago were thinking grades, fooling around, getting married after college, the more mature ones exactly that, their four-oh-one (k) plans. What they face, if we face it, will not just be gangbangers from cities. What will have gravitated to this Posse will be every lowlife scum with a will to do anything to survive. Mix into that the psychos that Doc Kellor was talking about. What happened to guys in prisons when this hit? Where are they now? Remember, our proud country had more people in prison per populace than damn near anywhere else in the world.

“Let them starve? Execute all of them? Maybe in some of the maximum-security houses the warden might have just done that. The food runs out and he lines them all up and shoots them rather than let them escape. But the minimum places, I bet those people were over the little chain-link fences by the third day. Most of the kids with a stupid-ass drug charge went home, but you already had some bad hombres in those places and they would gravitate together and now the world is a paradise, wide open, whatever they want if they have the balls to take it.” Washington shook his head.

“The food’s run out here in the East,” Washington continued. “If we were in the Midwest, the corn belt, cattle belt, I’d be more optimistic, but here? Density of population versus on-hand food, it’s out, it’s gone.

“And those barbarians, for they are barbarians, know only one thing now. Find food and gorge and take and inflict pain as they never dreamed possible before this happened. They’re thinking that even as we sit around this table, talking about rations, the nobility of our college president, the debate whether to shoot and eat our dogs.”

John winced at that. Of course Washington didn’t know about this morning, nor did he notice John’s reaction.

The phone rang.

The sound of it when it did happen was still rather startling. The three looked at one another and John stood up, went over to the president’s desk, and picked up the receiver. It was an old rotary phone from the forties or fifties, receiver heavy, wire not even the coiled type yet, just jet-black and hanging down.

“Matherson here.”

“John, is that you? It’s Tom here.”

“Go ahead, Tom.”

“I’m here with Don Barber. I just picked him up and brought him to the town hall.”

“What did he see?”

“Damn, John, he’s pretty shaken.”

“Can you bring him up?”

“Sure, John. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Over here.”

The line continued to hum for several seconds until Judy, the switchboard operator at the town hall, pulled the connect and the line went dead. John hung up.

“I think we got problems. Barber will be here in a few minutes with his report.”

They just made small talk as they waited, John standing, looking out the window, smoking what was now his seventh cigarette of the day. A group of students was coming down from behind the upper men’s dorm. Half a dozen girls and a couple of guys. The granola crew, they were called, and though they were mildly disdained before “the Day,” no one mocked them now. Most of them were outdoor ed or bio majors and had become highly proficient at food gathering, knowing which roots to dig, which plants could be brewed into teas, which had some medicinal value. One of the girls had a copy of Peterson’s guide to plants, dirty and worn, in her jeans pocket. Another girl was carrying a basket filled with mushrooms. So far there had been no mistakes on that score. Another was being helped by a boy, the woven basket between them piled high with greens. The boy and girl looked like some Rousseau ideal, a fantasy of the way the world was supposed to be if civilization went away.

The antique World War II jeep, which Tom had designated his official squad car, turned the corner and pulled up to Gaither. Barber got out along with Tom and they came straight in.

Barber saw the cigarette in John’s hand and sighed.

“Damn, I haven’t had one of those in years…,” he said softly. “John, could I?”

John hesitated, nodded, and handed one over. He was now down to eleven.

Don took a deep drag, sighed, went over to the table, and sat down. “They’re coming,” he said. No one spoke.

“Old Fort is a wreck. I flew down there first. At least fifty vehicles loaded with,” he paused, took another drag, and then waved his hand in a gesture of disgust, “I can’t even find a word to describe the scum. They were in the center of the town, most of it burning. There’s fighting going on, even now, but that town is finished.”

He sighed and looked out the window.

“Shit, it was like Korea in ’51. If only I had a battery of 105s up here, we could have annihilated their advance guard with one salvo.”

“Advance guard?” Washington asked.

Barber nodded.

“Give me a minute, Washington; my brain’s a bit slower now. Let me tell it in order.” No one spoke.

“Like I said, about fifty vehicles. Most in the center of the town, those barbarians just running amok. I could see them gunning people down, right in the middle of the street, flushing them out of buildings they were setting on fire. Out on the interstate about ten more vehicles. They took a couple of potshots at me; you’ll see a dozen or so holes in my plane by the way.

“So I figured to check up the road, fly up along Route 70, then come back down along the interstate. There wasn’t much on 70, though it was obvious they had passed along it. Buildings burning, but a couple hundred yards back from the road I could see people out, still alive. It looked like they just were driving straight through. Marion wasn’t hit hard. Just off the interstate enough, I guess, to be bypassed, plus they had well-manned roadblocks on the access ways in. Some evidence of fighting but looks like the scum backed off.”

“Think they’ll back off here?” Tom asked.

“No,” John said forcefully. “First off, their spies have scoped us out; they know we still do have some resources. Second, to get into Asheville, a sweet big city to loot, they first have to go through us. Third, they are heading this way and there is now no backing off. Marion they might mark for later, but I think it’s here first.”

Washington nodded his agreement.

“What happened next, Don?” John asked.

“I pushed on to Morganton, down to Exit 103 on the interstate.”

He lowered his head.

“I thought Charlotte was bad when I flew around it back when things started. That was different, though. In Charlotte there was rioting, yes, but people were mostly just trying snatch and grab, or just getting the hell out. This was different.”

“How so, sir?” John asked.

“You know the mental hospital grounds there?”

All nodded. Broughan, the state mental hospital, was set back from the interstate about half a mile. Beautiful open lawn, surrounded by the old sedate southern town of Morganton, complete with some antebellum homes on the main street.

“A fucking nightmare.”

John was shocked by Don’s language. He was a devout church-going man.

“How bad?” Washington asked.

“My God, I think they’re killing people and eating them,” he whispered.

No one spoke for a moment, Don just staring off, puffing on his cigarette right down to the filter.

“You’re kidding,” Charlie whispered. Don looked over at him fiercely.

“Would I joke about that?” he snapped. “There were a couple of hundred vehicles parked on the grounds of the hospital in a big circle, like they were circling the wagons. Old cars, Jeeps, trucks, even a couple of tractor trailers. Inside that circle the ground was blackened from a huge fire that was still smoldering. It was early when I flew over there; you could see them just sprawled out, sleeping it off. The hospital was burning, dead scattered all around it, most of the downtown burning as well, dead carpeting the streets. But it was what was inside that circle of old cars, trucks, motorcycles.”

He finished the cigarette, stubbed it out in an empty coffee cup, and looked, appealing, at John. John handed him another and pulled one out for himself; it was down to nine now.

“They had something like a gallows set up. Bodies were hanging from it….” Don shook and started to cry.

“They were cut open, some without legs and arms. Ten or more like that. Like hogs hung up to be butchered. My God…”

He fought for composure.

“You could see other people who were prisoners. As I flew over they were looking up at me, started to jump up and down, waving like poor bastards stranded in a nightmare. I sideslipped to get down lower for a closer look. One of those scum, I could see him looking up at me, and as I flew over he cut a woman’s throat, cut it so I could see it.

“That’s when I almost got shot down. They have an automatic and it opened up. Stitched my starboard wing. I dived down low, skimmed over not a dozen feet high, weaved and dodged.”

He smiled.

“Like the old days. Damn, I was good then, could put my spotter between two trees not thirty feet apart with telephone wires waiting on the other side.”

And then he seemed to unfocus again.

“I don’t want to believe what I saw.”

John sighed, sat back, lost in thought. Cannibalism. Leningrad, Stalingrad, with those cases it was civilians driven mad by hunger. Reports as well in China and, frightfully, documentation of Japanese soldiers doing it either out of desperation when cut off by the island hopping campaign, or ritualistically against American POWs.

“Not here,” Charlie sighed, “not here. This is America, for heaven’s sake.”

“Yes, here,” John said softly. “Why should we be any different?”

“Damn it all, we’re Americans; it just doesn’t happen here.”

“Donner Pass, the Essex… Jeffrey Dahmer? Our sick fascination with films about that Lecter character. Sixty days with little or no food just because the electric suddenly shut off. Hell, yes,” John said coldly.

“Most likely some damn cult down there. Like Doc said, psychotics running loose.”

The cult over in Knoxville with its leader proclaiming he was John the Baptist reincarnated was still running. There were reports of others, some nutcase proclaiming he was the messiah, others speaking in tongues and looking for answers in Revelation, others just beyond madness believing that aliens had invaded. He thought of that one small coven up above Haw Creek, a couple of dozen families and a church, which according to rumors not too long ago was into passing snakes around. They had sealed themselves off completely, said that it was the end-time and God’s wrath was at hand. No one dared to even get within a hundred yards of their barrier now, and John wondered what madness they were practicing up there.

“They have nothing to lose now,” John continued. “A nation under martial law, they’ve looted, raped, murdered. They know that if civilization ever gets the upper hand again, any semblance of order, all of them will be put against the wall and shot. So nothing to lose.

“Mix into that the terror of it all. We figured out it was an EMP, but others… especially others who were already off-kilter? What’s the answer? God got angry, Gaia the Earth spirit got pissed, Satan took over?”

He found he was almost on the edge of hysteria himself. His hands shaking slightly, he pulled out another cigarette and tossed yet another over to Don.

“Satan’s taken over. Maybe whoever’s leading them is preaching that. God has turned his back on America, Satan has won, so anything goes. I doubt if all of them are doing it; I want to think most of them are as terrified of whoever is running their crew as we are. But I’m willing to bet whoever is running it is shouting that he has the inside dope from God, Satan, whomever.”

“It’s insane,” Charlie whispered.

“Remember Jonestown. Those were Americans, even though they no longer lived in the forty-eight. And nearly a thousand of them committed suicide because of some damn nutcase who told them to drink Kool-Aid laced with poison because God had ordered it through him.

“Look, you get people scared, then you knock out every prop that we’ve taken for granted. After these last sixty days I bet there’s a dozen prophets running around this country saying, ‘Follow me,’ and even if but one-tenth of one percent of the survivors do so, that will still be hundreds of thousands of barbarians on the march and the rest of us running, scared shitless of them.

“Damn our enemies who did this to us, they knew us well,” John sighed. “They knew human nature too well, and just how fragile civilization is, and how tough it is to defend it. Something we forgot.”

No one spoke until Don finally stirred.

“I flew back along the interstate,” he said softly. “I counted, between Morganton, Old Fort, and on the road, about two hundred-fifty vehicles total.”

“A thousand to fifteen hundred people then,” Washington said.

“And just remember this, gentlemen. I was a trained artillery spotter, so I know how to count and how to spot.”

“We don’t doubt you,” Charlie said.

“In this case, don’t doubt me. Now for the troubling aspect tactically.”

“They’re coming round the back,” John said.

“Exactly. That’s why I flew over here on my way back. I counted two dozen vehicles on the old dirt road, right at the base of the mountains by Andrew’s Geyser. Some on the abandoned paved road. A couple more farther up, near where the railroad track crosses over the old dirt road. They know our back door, and not just the interstate.”

“Any on the old fire roads?” Charlie asked. Don shook his head.

“Hard to see, with the summer canopy,” he said.

“I doubt it,” Washington interjected. “Unless they have a couple of local boys, those old fire roads are mazes. My bet is they’ll stick to the old abandoned paved road, the dirt road farther to the north, and the railroad track as their flanker, and they’ll hit there first.”

“I agree,” Charlie said.

“They could be here trying to maneuver into a flanking position by late afternoon,” Don said. John nodded.

“They must have a good military leader in there, knows his stuff and has done a thorough recon on us by now and sees the flank roads as the opening move. They’ll hit just before dawn,” John said. “Hope to catch us sleeping. If I was one of them, Don here flying around would tell me that what’s waiting for them has some kind of warning, so they will move fast rather than give us time to prepare.

“We can pray they’re just a mob that overruns by numbers and surprise, but it looks like there are some ex-military with them. Worst case, they got a couple of recon types who know how to figure out the ground, the defenses, the approaches, and formulate the plan of attack.

“Their advance party is in Old Fort to secure the place for the rest of them later today. I’d bet by late afternoon their advance will start probing, and we’ve got to meet them forward of the potential line of battle. They see our setup, get a good judgment on our strength, we’ll have even more problems holding. They’ll laager in Old Fort tonight and tear the place apart, then hit us before dawn.”

“We’ll be prepared,” Washington said sharply, and stood up.

“We feed the troops, then move them into position today. Washington, we’ve talked about this scenario, so we both know the plans. I want officers’ briefing within the hour. Tom, start to evacuate all homes behind our fallback line beyond the old toll road as we’ve talked about before. Charlie, I want every citizen who can carry a gun as our reserve. Mr. Barber, I hope you can stay up in the air most of the day. Keep high, though, sir, real high; just keep an eye on their movements,” John said.

Washington looked around the room, a thin smile on his face. Charlie, shriveled with emaciation, said nothing, but his gaze communicated volumes. John was now in charge.

“I think we should get to work, gentlemen,” John said.

Tom headed back to his car with Don by his side.

Washington looked over at John and Charlie.

“Gentlemen, I think it’s important you join us in chapel and for our meal.”

Two hours later, after the officers’ briefing and a map exercise, the 1:25,000 geological survey maps taken from the small map store in Black Mountain spread out on the table, John felt everyone understood their mission. Several of the platoon leaders were students, Jeremiah and Phil having been promoted to second lieutenants, in the first and second platoons of Company A. The others were vets from around the town, a good sprinkling of men from Desert Storm, a few from Nam.

John walked into the dining hall. Strange, it still looked basically the same. The counter where kids used to get their meal cards swiped with a laser scanner, circular tables, the twin doors leading into the food-serving area.

It was a room filled with a lot of happy memories and a few poignant ones. This school was unlike what he had expected when he had first come here. He feared that his old commandant, in his rush to get John a job where Mary once lived, had most likely hooked him into some fundamentalist camp meeting. Not that he had any particular objection on a philosophical level as an American, but still, he was a Catholic kid from Jersey. His fears could not be farther from the truth. It had turned into the warmest place he had ever worked in.

He had been greeted with open arms into a community where friendly intellectual debate was encouraged. Though a few might be a bit judgmental, most were actually very open-minded, saying that was the true spirit of what Christ tried to teach and not the nuttiness most outside the South believed of them, and all were guided by a desire to put their students first. The school was better than John ever imagined and now, at this moment, he realized yet again just how much he loved them all, especially “the kids” now sitting at the tables, decked out in camo gear, weapons stacked along the walls.

The tradition with faculty was not to eat segregated off but rather to join a table with their students, laugh, debate, argue, tease, stimulate.

Mary had attended this college her first year before transferring to far more competitive Duke, and coming here was coming home for her. Several of the professors had even taught her long ago.

Towards the end, she often came here to join John for lunch, and always kids would gather round their table and those who fully knew her condition would usually leave her with a kiss to the forehead, an embrace, and, “I’m praying for you every day, ma’am.”

And then she was gone.

But still, in the four years afterwards, so many happy days here, of shared meals, of the absolutely ridiculous but still touching dumb skits by the faculty for the Senior Breakfast the day before their graduation.

But now…

The cafeteria lines were closed, the food service off to the far side, tables set up near the back door, the grill outside smoking madly with the slabs of bear meat. Most of the students had already taken their plates, each proportion carefully cut, a slab of bear meat, some greens, a cup of herbal tea, that was it, but still a pound or more of meat, while downtown, at this moment, everyone else was getting thin soup with just a couple ounces of meat mixed in.

And yet in spite of their hunger, they remained restrained. None had yet to cut in; all sat around their tables, talking, but not touching the food. John looked over at Charlie. “You will eat,” John said sharply. “John?”

“Charlie, you will eat.”

He pushed Charlie forward and they joined the back of the line. It only took a few seconds before they were handed the plate, the piece of meat already cut. John noticed that the cooking staff actually had a scale behind the carving table, each piece of meat thrown on it before being put on a plate. Maybe the measurement would be off by an ounce or two one way or the other, but still it was a message to stifle any arguments.

John followed Washington to a table set directly in front of the now-closed doors that had once opened onto the cafeteria line. As they reached their table the room fell silent, all eyes turned towards them.

Without prompting Reverend Abel stepped forward and offered the blessing and finished, John and a few others making the sign of the cross.

But Washington remained standing. “I am proud of you,” Washington said.

The room was absolutely silent, no matter how longingly some looked at the feast before them, a largess of meat not seen in weeks.

“I am proud of all of you, everyone. Those who are bringing in food for us, especially our marksman Brett Huffman.”

Brett, who had dropped the bear, stood up, and there was a round of applause and cheering.

“But also for all the rest of you. Those of you gathering, those of you searching, those of you in jobs some might think unglamorous, the work in the refugee center, the isolation ward, the infirmary, the woodcutting crews.”

He looked around the room.

“Tonight or tomorrow we face battle.”

A murmur swept through the room.

“You’ve heard the rumors about a group called the Posse. We just received intelligence they are headed this way.”

No one spoke, but John could see the anxious looks back and forth.

“There will be battle by this time tomorrow and some of you will die. I have never lied to you; I never will. Some of you will die.”

And now he had their attention like never before.

“You are now soldiers. Every one of you. Those of you who trained for it, and those who have not. Every student of this college is now mobilized as we previously discussed. Those who are not assigned to our two combat companies will fall in as medics, messengers, and in the other jobs you have been trained for. I expect all of you to do your duty as soldiers.”

Washington turned and started to sit down. Before John even quite realized what he was doing, he stood up.

A few had started to cut into their meal, but as he stood they stopped, looking towards him.

“Tonight, tomorrow, you will fight. It is, tragically, the day you grow up and will never be able to turn back from. You are the defenders of thousands of people in this town who are now too weak to defend themselves. And now I will be blunt. I will fall silent for a moment and I want you to look at the meal before you. That food is food sacrificed by others to give you strength to defend them . .. and yourselves.”

He did fall silent and no one spoke, nearly all looking down at their plates.

“Think of,” and he actually chuckled sadly, “think of how two months back we complained about the food here, filled our plates, then tossed half of it out, and now, tonight, you will face men and women who will kill you and everyone else for that piece of meat on your plate you would have thrown out but two months back.”

He hesitated but knew it had to be said.

“Or even your own flesh if they win, because not forty miles from here this evil band is slaughtering human beings for food.” There was an uncomfortable stirring.

“So for everything you eat now know that but two miles from here, down in the town of Black Mountain, half a dozen died of starvation this morning. Died so you can eat, and have strength to survive and defend.”

He sighed, started to sit down, and then stopped.

“Some of you were in my classes on military history. You know how we so casually talked of wars past, the suffering remote. You remember some of the speakers I’ve brought in, veterans of that generation we now call the Greatest Generation.”

He braced himself, looking around the room, and now there were tears in his eyes.

“Tonight, tomorrow, in years to come, you will, you must be, the greatest generation. You must win this fight; then remembering all that America was, you must rebuild her and never forget…”

He sighed, lowering his head.

“Never forget….”

He sat down and for a moment there was silence. Laura, the girl in the choir, stood up and raised her voice.

Instantly all were standing, singing as well, and never had he heard it sung thus.

He looked at them and tried to sing, unable to do so, overcome by emotion.

The last stanza finished, a cheer erupted and all sat down, except for Laura. She smiled at John, and half a dozen of the choir came to join her.

And together they started to sing again, even as their comrades ate.

John lowered his head, gazing at his meal. Perhaps half, maybe a quarter for myself, he thought, the rest for Jen, the kids, and Ginger.

The meal done, there was a procession, led by the American flag, the school banner, and their fifer playing, over to the Chapel of the Prodigal with its famous fresco painted by Ben Long. The service had to be short and to the point, for John had warned Reverend Abel that time was pressing.

They had opened with the Lord’s Prayer, and just as they finished the back doors of the chapel opened and in hobbled President Hunt, leaning on the arm of a student for strength. All stood, many with tears in their eyes. President Hunt took the front, standing beneath the painting, and then slowly drew a Bible out of his pocket.

“I carried this Bible in Nam,” he said, his voice husky, weak. “I held it close the night I was wounded and lost my leg. There is a psalm I read every night I was there and I wish to share it with you…. We call it the soldier’s psalm, the Ninety-first.”

He half-opened the Bible, but it was obvious he knew the prayer by heart.

“‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty…’” As he spoke, his voice gained strength.

“‘Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.

“‘Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.’”

It was midafternoon when John at last returned home. The entire town was astir, at least those still with the strength to move. Don had flown a second mission and returned with word that the Posse was indeed moving, already past Marion. The first skirmish had erupted halfway down the mountain in Swannanoa Gap, ironically not far from where, over 140 years earlier, in perhaps the last battle in the Hast during the Civil War,

Confederate militia had fought to turn back Yankee raiders. The half dozen advancing up the abandoned paved road had been wiped out near where the old overlook and hot dog stand had been.

Another skirmish erupted along the dirt road farther to the north, longdistance sniping, one student soon dead from it and another missing.

In town, those men still with any strength were forming up, deploying into a secondary line.

Charlie was in the town hall, and fuming with rage. He had called in the report to Asheville, begging for support. And they had written Black Mountain off. They claimed a group was approaching them from the south and had already torched Hendersonville and there was no defensive bottleneck to keep them back. Everything they had was committed to that direction.

Tom reported though that Asheville’s barrier, just short of Exit 53, the narrow bottleneck of the interstate, and I-40, was now heavily manned by Asheville militia, but they were not coming forward to help pitch in.

Black Mountain and Swannanoa were on their own, Asheville most likely figuring they could take the blow and if the invaders were repulsed, that would be great; if the defenders were overrun, the opposition would be so weakened that they would not have the strength for a final push. Payback perhaps for the defiance over the refugees, even though Charlie had warned that if the town fell the last thing he would do would be blow the water main and Asheville be damned.

At three in the afternoon the militia, like something out of long ago, had marched through the town, fifer in the lead wearing his Union kepi and blue jacket, playing “Yankee Doodle” over and over, complete as well to a drummer from the high school and a flag bearer forming a tableau like the old painting. The street was lined with starving civilians who cheered them and wept as they passed.

A few could remember such parades from sixty years past and could not help but wonder at this, the sight in their own hometown, of kids marching off as from long ago, to fight others who but two months back were part of the same country.

Their training uniforms of college blue were now replaced with camo, donated by civilians of the town, a mixed lot of hunting gear, some military surplus, some of it way too big for the smaller girls in the ranks. But still it lent a military air. Some of the vets in the ranks sported helmets and more than a few of them were toting firearms that would have triggered an ATF raid in the old days… a couple of Thompsons, AK-47s, street sweepers, a frightful-looking .50-caliber sniper rifle, and a number of exotic-looking assault rifles. Piled in the back of a truck were satchel charges, some primitive mines, and hundreds of tin cans packed with scrap metal and a blasting charge, to be lit with a match, then thrown.

Making them had been a tricky business, and one student had been killed and two wounded just after church service while packing a “grenade” when the charge went off.

It was indeed like something from long ago, John thought, watching as they came down Black Mountain Road and turned onto State Street, heading east to the gap. He stood to attention at the corner and saluted, standing thus until the last of the two companies of infantry and the company of auxiliary supports had passed. Though it was a solemn moment, he caught the eye of more than one of his former students, a flash of a smile, a subtle wave, as if somehow they were still kids playacting even as they toted rifles, shotguns, satchel charges, homemade bazookas and grenades.

He and Washington had nearly come to blows arguing about the plan, and for a few moments John felt that the two months of Washington calling him Colonel had been nothing more than tradition and playacting. And yet, in the end, Washington had at last deferred, though he warned it would triple their casualties and maybe cost them “the war.”

After the passage of the militia up to the gap, John then briefed the hundreds of civilian volunteers, some barely able to stand, as to their task and where to deploy, while Charlie made sure that two precious cattle would be taken up to the front and there slaughtered and cooked, with all being able to fill their stomachs before the fight. Kellor had pitched a fit over that, claiming it was better they went in with empty stomachs in case of gut wounds, but Washington and John had won out; better to lose some that way than have half the army collapse from hunger pains. The last few precious bottles of vitamins had been pulled out and each combatant swallowed a double dose as well.

Carl was leading down over five hundred more from Swannanoa, those still able to heft a gun and fight.

John finally felt that he had time to get away and get his family out. Their home was on what was being defined now as the front line and he had decided to move his family back up into the Cove near the college.

Jen’s home, though abandoned for nearly two months, was still intact, though scavenged through, with a door broken along with some windows.

He pulled into his driveway, and with all that had happened he realized that he had left but nine hours before.

The two bodies were still out on the deck. The meat wagon had not come; in the heat, they were now drawing swarms of flies. Jen stood in the doorway, and as he got out of the car Ginger came up, head lowered, whimpering, almost scared, and Jennifer flung herself into his arms.

“Daddy,” and she started to cry.

He suddenly realized that he had become so preoccupied with the approach of the Posse that he had all but forgotten what had transpired here just this morning.

Jen came up to him and the look in her eyes told him something was wrong. Had there been more of them? “Everyone ok?”

John gasped. “Yes, we’re ok.”

“Thank God.”

“You look beat, John.”

“I really can’t explain much now, Jen, but we only have an hour to pack up and move out. We’re moving up to your house.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“There’s going to be a fight here by tomorrow. We’re evacuating everyone on both sides of the highway.”

“John, we all need to sit down and talk.” He felt Jennifer still in his arms. He hugged her.

“I’m sorry about Zach, sweetie. He was a brave doggie. The best.”

“I know, Daddy.”

“John, there’s something else,” Jen said. He looked at her.

“John, come inside with me please.”

Too much was happening and her tone set him to a near panic. Was it something about Jennifer?

He broke her embrace and looked at her. Her features, though pinched and yellow, had not changed much.

“Jennifer honey, I think Ginger needs to play,” Jen said.

Her voice was not a suggestion and Jennifer registered it.

“OK, Grandma.”

“And make sure she stays away from those bodies out on the deck.”

The way Jen said it, the message of those words, struck John as yet another breakdown. Tell your kid to go out and play with the dog, but stay away from the men Daddy had shot during the night because your beloved golden might suddenly look at them as a meal.

He followed Jen into the living room. Elizabeth and Ben were sitting together on the sofa, holding hands, and somehow at that instant John knew. To his surprise, Makala was standing in the corner of the room, half-turned, looking at him.

Elizabeth looked up at him and took a deep breath.

“Daddy, I’m pregnant.”

Absolutely thunderstruck, he couldn’t speak. He looked at Ben, whose arm was now protectively around Elizabeth’s shoulder. Ben tried to look him straight in the eye and then lowered his gaze.

John turned away, fearful of what he might say or do, lit another cigarette, and walked to the bay window.

Jen came up to his side.

Behind him Elizabeth started to cry and Ben was whispering to her. “John?”

It was Jen, standing by his side, whispering. “For God’s sake, John, do the right thing.” He turned and looked back.

“How?” was all he could say, and he instantly realized the absurdity of it. At sixteen Elizabeth already so looked like her mother, and he remembered when they met she was twenty, he was twenty-one. Of course he knew how.

But this was his baby girl, who used to smother him with “smoochies” and say she would love him forever.

He walked towards them and to his horror he saw fear in Elizabeth’s eyes. Ben then stood up.

“Sir. If there’s blame, it’s mine.” His voice was trembling and broke into an adolescent squeak. “It’s my fault, not hers.”

“No, Ben. Both of us.”

She stood up and put her arm around him.

“Daddy, we love each other.”

He slowly sat down, shaking his head.

“My God,” he sighed. “You’re kids in high school. College ahead.”

“Not anymore,” Elizabeth said, and now there was some strength to her voice. “Daddy, that’s all over now. All over.”

He looked up at her.

She had always been slender, like her mom, but was even more so now.

Though he didn’t want to say it, he did.

“Maybe the lack of food. Maybe that’s why you’re late.”

“No, John,” and for the first time Makala spoke. “I found a test kit. It’s positive. She’s going to have a baby.”

As she said the word “baby,” Elizabeth and Ben, like so many across the ages, looked at each other and smiled.

John looked at them, again how slender she was, losing weight. Though he was a Catholic, even a non-practicing one, the thought of abortion flickered, even though it was anathema to him. Having this baby might kill her.

“I need to think,” John said, and stood up, heading to his office.

He stopped at the doorway and then looked back.

“We have to evacuate in one hour. So start packing….” He couldn’t say any more and left the room.

He sat down at his desk. The bottle behind it, gone, damn it. He fumbled in his breast pocket and pulled out the smokes. He took one out and lit it.

Numbed, he looked out the window, at the backyard where Jennifer was throwing a stick to Ginger, who though moving slowly still was trying to play.

“John?”

He looked up. It was Makala. “Am I intruding?”

“Yes and no.”

“Can I join you?”

He nodded and she took the chair by his desk. “What are you thinking?” she asked. He sighed.

“The whole world has gone to hell. You know I killed two men this morning?”

“I saw the bodies. And they deserved it.”

“And Zach?”

“I’m sorry, John, about him. He died well, though.”

John lowered his head. Was it only hours ago? he thought.

“There’s a barbarian horde coming this way and by tomorrow they might overrun us. If they do, all this will be moot. Jennifer out there will be dead, if lucky you and Elizabeth dead, all of us dead. The country… dead.”

“That’s why you have to accept what happened with Elizabeth.”

“What? She’s a kid, Makala. She was going to be a junior in high school, that son of…” He hesitated. “Ben a senior. My God, Makala. Accept it?”

“Kids younger than them have been getting pregnant for thousands of years. Especially in wartime.”

“Not my baby.”

“Yes, your baby,” and she reached out and touched his knee.

“Listen, John. You know and I know there isn’t much chance. And they know it, too. They think they’re in love. For God’s sake I hope they are in love. They want that taste of life as much as you did, as I did, as any of us do.”

He looked at her and found he couldn’t respond.

“Give them your blessings. I know it will be hard. But do it. I know the risk she faces as much, maybe more than you do. Give her that blessing for her to carry with her and give her strength.”

He saw tears in Makala’s eyes.

“She’s a good kid, John. You and Mary raised her well. Don’t turn this into a moral question now. They were two scared kids, the world going to hell around them; it was all but inevitable it would happen. If not for this damn war, it’d of been different. But it’s not. And you have to accept that.”

He nodded. “Tell Ben to come in here.”

A moment later Ben was at the door, standing straight, eyes wide. John motioned for him to come into his office.

“Sir. You can do what you want to me, sir. Just don’t blame your daughter.”

And at that moment John softened. He could see the kid half-expected to see a shotgun or face a damn good thrashing. He had the guts to take it. “You love my daughter?”

“More than anything in the world, sir.”

“Well, so do I. Her and Jennifer.”

“I know that, sir.”

John nodded. He didn’t want to think too much further about how Ben loved her; no father really would. But John could see that, though seventeen, Ben was trying to be a man at this moment and would have to be a man in the days to come.

John stood up, hesitated, then extended his hand.

“Thank you, sir,” and Ben’s voice cracked a bit.

John nodded.

“Just don’t call me Dad yet,” he finally said. “I’m not ready for that.”

“Yes, sir.”

He knew Elizabeth, in the next room, had heard the exchange, and she came through the doorway and flung herself into his arms. “Thank you, Daddy.”

Now he did fill up. Her voice still sounded like his little girl. He saw Jennifer standing in the doorway as well, smiling. “So you’re not going to kill them?” Jennifer asked, and that broke the tension for the moment.

“No, of course not, sweetie.”

“Ok,” and she was gone.

He felt there was some sort of ritual required now, and as Elizabeth slipped out of his arms he took her hand and placed it in Ben’s hand.

“Once the next few days are over, well, since our priest disappeared, we’ll ask Reverend Black to do the marriage.”

Elizabeth smiled and leaned against Ben’s shoulder.

“But we got other worries now. Like I said, we’re leaving this house within the hour. Girls, you better pack what you can fit into the car. Ben, get down to your family and tell them to get out as well; have them come up to the Cove for now. They can stay with us if need be.”

Elizabeth and Ben looked at each other.

“You can do your good-byes later; there isn’t time to waste. Tell your folks I’ll drive your family up to the Cove in an hour, so be ready.”

He hesitated and suddenly it truly hurt, what he was about to say next.

“Ben. We’re going to be attacked, most likely early tomorrow morning. You’ll have to fall in with the town reserve guard.”

“Yes, sir.”

Elizabeth started to cry.

“Daddy, can’t he stay with us in the Cove?”

“Absolutely not,” Ben replied forcefully.

She looked at Ben and then back at John, eyes filled with tears.

“It’s his duty now,” John said softly.

Ben looked at Elizabeth, hesitated, then kissed her lightly on the lips.

“I’ll see you later, sweetheart.”

She couldn’t reply, hugging him fiercely.

“Elizabeth, go help your grandmother and Jennifer pack.”

She hesitated.

Ben broke free from her embrace. “I’ll be ok, sweetheart. Go on now.”

Crying, she left the room, and Ben turned back to face John.

John opened his gun cabinet. Scanned the weapons and pulled out one of his best, an Ml carbine.

“You know how to load and handle this?”

“Remember, sir, you took me shooting with it last year.”

John checked the clip, it was full, and there was a box of extra ammunition for it.

“Take this; you’re going to need it.”

Ben nodded.

“Report to Charlie Fuller. Tell him I’ve assigned you to be one of his runners.”

“Sir, you are not keeping me back, are you?” John lied with the shake of his head. “You’ll be in the middle of it, son.”

Ben nodded solemnly, hefting the carbine and looking at it. “Let me help Elizabeth first if you don’t mind, sir.”

“Sure, you got a few minutes.” He looked at John, eyes solemn. “If anything happens to me, sir…” John forced a smile.

“You’ll be ok, Ben. Now go help Elizabeth.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ben left the room and Makala was standing at the doorway, smiling. “You did the right thing,” she said. “Let me think about it.”

To his surprise she came up and kissed him on the lips. “I better get up to the conference center and evacuate the folks there. From what I just heard, I assume that will be in the middle of it.” John nodded.

“I’ll drive you up there. Charlie should be sending up some vehicles to get people out. We’re evacuating everybody from here clear back to the town. Once you get your patients out, report to Doc Kellor. I think you’d be most useful there.”

“Is it going to be bad?”

John nodded again.

“Real bad, I think.”

She squeezed his hand and went back to help the girls pack up.

He looked around. What to take? The guns of course. Seven rifles, including the original Civil War Springfield and the replica Hawkins .50 flintlock. Throw them in the trunk of the car for now. He scanned his office. What to take? The portrait of Mary of course, and as he picked it up he thought of Makala in the next room. Neither would mind, he realized with a sad smile.

He took the picture out of its frame and slipped it into his pocket. He then checked the loads in the Glock and the shotgun and shouted for his family to get moving.